Over the summer months a lot of pig hunters would have acquired a new pup to their pack. That new pup maybe bouncing off the walls wanting to get out there onto those pigs. But what you have done with that pup up until this stage is going to dictate on how that pup turns out. Over the years I have seen lot of pups of many varied breeds. When people tell you that there is a special technique in picking a top pup out of a litter, that’s a load of codswallop. First thing you should look for in a pup is the right breeding. Once you get this right the next step is all up to you. There is a number of dog breeders out there that have been around for a number of years. I hear of hunters saying that their pups are no good then I hear other hunters saying that their pups are excellent. The reason that there is a difference is not in the breeding but in the training. Over the years I have seen pups come out of litters going to different owners and I could tell that some of the pups would not make good pig dogs and some would. Not because of the pup but because of the owner. So when you are looking for your next pig dog go to a hunter who catches a lot of pigs. For myself I acquired a new pup this year. What I was looking for was a hunter who was catching a lot of pork. This lead me to a chap from Dunedin by the name of Richard Hands. Now Richard has been hunting no where near as long as I have, but he has caught a lot of good pigs. Because I am in the Ridgeline judging team I get to hear about who is catching the big pigs. Richard had weighed in five boars over the two hundred pound mark in the last two years so this got my thinking that I need one of his pups.
I am proud to announce that I am not only the owner of one of Richards pups but that Richard is know a part of our Ridgeline judging team. Richard had emailed me separate photos of both parents and all of the pups standing on the back of his dog box. All but one of these pups where crouched down as if they where scared of standing so high off the ground. The pup that I picked was standing tall and had that alert look in his eyes. I picked my new pup up when he was 6 weeks old and have named him Fog. It was a 3 ½ hour drive home that day and Fog was quite happy to sit on the seat beside me and go to sleep. I have had other pups that will throw up when traveling in a vehicle for the first time.
Now that I had Fog at home the training was about to start. For any hunter that gets a new pup don’t think that you just wait for it to grow old enough to take out on the hill. I personally don’t see any difference in the stages that a dog goes though compared to that what a person goes through. For any parent that waits until their child goes to school to start learning is letting that child down, just like any pig hunter that waits until they start hunting their young dog to teach it things. A child that has more experiences earlier on in their lives and is taught a lot of things will always have an advantage over those children that don’t and when you have an advantage you are more confident in your decision making.
For every new pup that a hunter has is just one more chance for that hunter to learn. If you have not had a pup before then everything about that pup will be new to you. The more pups you have had in the past the more you will know about how to train them. It is like trying to drive a car for the first time you won’t know what to do. From the passenger seat it looks easy. Once in the driver seat you have to hold the clutch in while you put the car in gear then slowly let the clutch out while you apply some revs on the accelerator. At first this seems hard with those kangaroo starts and stalling the car until you get to the stage that you do not even have to think about what you are doing and things just happen. When we are dealing with a pup you don’t want to make mistakes as it can make things so much harder to fix later on. For every young dog that you have that does not work out for what ever reason that it might be is a big learning curb and you don’t want to make that same mistake again.
If you are a dog owner and have had a number of dogs not work out then don’t always blame the dog take a good look at what you are doing as you are the big influence on how that dog thinks.
One of the big down sides with Fog is willingness to want to hold onto the other dogs all of the time. Poor old Breeze at nine years old can not go anywhere without Fog dragging along on her neck. He also loves biting Lightning as well as if it is a game.
However he does not do this to Cloud as he obviously knows how far to push his luck. To me a dog that wants to hold all of the time is a bad habit as I like my dogs to bail. Ever since I picked up fog he has been around pigs every day as I have a large boar next to my dog kennels and a 25 acre block with pigs for training dogs. I like my dogs to be confident around pigs not wanting to just attack every time they see one. So for the first couple of months Fog would come into the block with me when I was feeding the pigs so he was getting confident at being around them.
At four and a half months old after witnessing Fog chasing the sheep I decided that it was time to get him to start bailing the pigs. This was so easy as he did not fell threatened by them, it was just a case of putting my old bitch Breeze in and getting her to bail. Within minutes Fog was really focused on the pigs and bailing well and he did not once try and get close enough to try and grab a pig which was good to see. For the next two months his training will consist of bailing my training pigs and I will start to hunt him when he is about six months old or as I think he is ready. The reason that I would not take him out on the hill for a hunt just yet is that I do not want to get him injured at a young age. While there is always the risk that he could get ripped on my training pigs I have got much more control over what happens simply because I do not take a lot of dogs into the block together. One training dog and one learning dog is the best way to teach a young dog as if I was to have three or four dogs in there together they would want to go in and attack a pig and that would not be teaching a dog any good habits and it would also be injuring my pigs.
At present I am hunting two main dogs together, Cloud and Lightning so over this coming winter I will start getting Fog out with these two dogs where he will learn very quickly so by the following winter he to will become a main dog. All main dogs where once pups. What made them main dogs had a little bit to do with the breeding and a lot to do with the upbringing and training that the dog has received on the way through. For all of those pig hunters, and I know there will be a lot, who have acquired a pup over the last couple of months don’t leave your pup in the kennel waiting until it is old enough to get out on the hill. Do as many things as you can with that pup, learn as much as you can from it as it will be learning from you. There is no point in finding out that at 18 months old the dog is not working out and then blaming the dog for the many mistakes that you have made over the previous 18 months just to get another pup and make the same mistake again. If you have had trouble with a young dog in the past talk to someone who is good with dogs, it does not have to be a pig hunter. A lot of farmers are good with dogs and you can learn a lot from them, there are also a lot of dog handlers that have great understanding with their dogs. To train a dog to be a pig dog or a sheep dog or even a guard dog is all the same principles. Its all about encouraging the dog to do the things that you want and discouraging the things that you don’t want.
